The Exiles
by theawkwardcarapacian
Summary: Four exiled carapacians tread sand as they wander across deserts to meet, and then meet their doom.
1. wayward

**the exiles**

**chapter one: wayward**

_Where_

_am_

_I?_

Is the first thing that comes to his mind after he opened his eyes. This wasn't where he was earlier. These weren't the lush landscapes that he had known for years, when he had lived peacefully and without a care in the world. But everything had changed in a flick of a finger, which was, in fact, what changed everything. He could see it so visibly now, the streaks of red flying through the air like paint on a canvas and all of the dead bodies that he had hoped would make to the end and-

He punches himself. He had vowed never to speak of it again, but instead attempt to bury the trauma under piles and piles of blank emotion. This would prove to be useful, until his past would come and find him. He steps into the unrelenting rays of the desert sun and shuffles his feet in the hot sand. He looks behind himself and observes the wreckage of what used to be a battleship. The recent past is recalled. A flash, and a bang. Extreme tremors and furious heat, and hitting his head on the wall as he touched down. He tentatively touches the spot where he smashed into a windowpane at around 200mph and winces. Hopefully that didn't do too much damage.

He wanders, searching for things to do, people to see, and destinations to reach. Unfortunately for him, there are none of those things. So instead he speaks to himself, long, rambling thoughts about how he feels and what the hell just happened. He is lonely, and draws other people in the sand. He knows they're not real, but he sits down next to them and talks. Over the course of the day, he has found many small green plants poking their stems out of the sand, somehow surviving, and at night it's cold, and he is faced with a choice. Small green things can be eaten. Small green things can burn.

He does not have much to drink, so he walks until he passes out from dehydration. Somehow, he manages to get up again and continue wandering. He has long since forgotten his name, and the pristine white sheets that he used to wear have become a light brown color. Today is his… how many days was it? He stopped counting because he couldn't care less.

Today was an interesting day, because he found himself walking past a building, that apparently had not been struck down by some… mysterious force. The building was crumbling and old, and it had a large chunk missing from it. He carefully climbs the steps, hoping not to get buried under an enormous pile of rubble if the entire thing came crashing down. He explores, wondering what kind of people lived here. He finds a calculator, inoperable, and a broken bottle. He is careful not to step on it. Eventually he reaches the roof, and he hangs his sits on the side of the building while watching the sunset.

It is almost a year later, and he is very grateful to have survived this far. Even he doesn't know how he got this far. The past year has been a blur, and all he remembers is feeding off of small plants and drinking incredibly old water. He stands on top of a sandy cliff, watching the ground below him and-

Then he realizes that cliffs can't possibly be made out of sand. He walks in a circle for a while, his footsteps imprinted in the sand. He stubs his foot on something and he yelps out in pain, then stumbles and falls off the cliff. Luckily for him, the cliff wasn't that high and he climbs back up it. Now he knows something is off. He brushes a layer of sand away, the particles disintegrating into the air. Buried under the sand is a hatch. Finally! Something new. After prying the hatch open with his fingers, he peers down the long hole. There is a ladder to help him climb down. He wonders what could possibly be down there, and he shrugs. At least it's better than nothing. Slowly, he descends.


	2. peregrine

**the exiles**

**chapter two: peregrine**

_All I ever wanted to do was deliver the mail._

Is the first thing that comes to her mind as she wakes. She is lying on the sand as she inspects her blood-stained garments. She would not like to talk about where she got those blemishes on her life. She holds up a nearby golden flag and dons it like some sort of hoodie. She feels better having the weight of those clothes off. She then surveys the area around her, smoke billowing from the wrecked vessel.

The recent past is recalled. It all began with that STUPID green package and letter. She caught sight of them when a police officer of Derse got his hands on it. She was able to retrieve the letter, but the green parcel was out of bounds. The officer told her that in order to get the parcel, she needed to talk with the man known as Jack Noir. Eons later, she realized that she was a fool to try and negotiate with him.

She finally reached Jack Noir, and he proposes a deal for her. In exchange for both the White Queen's ring and the White King's scepter, she would get the green parcel. Now that she thought about it, the deal was so lopsided she didn't know what you were thinking at the time. It seemed as if the urgency to deliver mail was stronger than her conscience. And look where that got her.

After sauntering around on the Battlefield and passing a rebellion along the way, she managed to retrieve both of the items. As she was heading back towards Jack's office, she was greeted by some brute that was trying to intercept her. She had never used a sword before. Until that very moment, when she killed a fellow carapacian. At that moment, it felt as if a large weight had been placed on her shoulders, never to be taken off. It would follow her for the rest of her life.

She doesn't really remember what happened after that, but she remembers a figure swooping down, trading the ring and the scepter for the green package, and then her giving the package, begrudgingly to the receiver. She then was involved in a blur of bright colors and loud vibrating, and she ended up here. If it wasn't for that STUPID green package and letter.

She wanders for the remainder of the day, searching for some rations for her to eat. She has a feeling that she was going to be stuck in this sandy hellhole for a long, long time. It was almost as if she was being punished for the trouble she had caused. Serves me right, she thought.

She grips her satchel in her hand, the only reminder of her past. There is a solitary letter in it, addressed to a certain professor. She has sworn off opening and reading it, the only principle that she would keep as a parcel mistress. Hours would turn to days, and days would turn to years as the golden garments she wears slowly fades to grey.

She comes across a giant tree. She is puzzled, as she has never seen a plant grow in the desert in all her years of travelling. She curiously inspects the single, giant, silver fruit hanging from the thick white branches. Then she notices that that fruit is not a fruit at all, but a metallic pod. Upon thinking this, the pod drops from the tree and lands heavily in the sand. Startled by this, she jumps back a few inches. Behind a rock, she peers at the pod. Well, it's definitely much more exciting than crossing the span of an endless expanse of desert. She takes a couple steps towards it. A door opens. Here goes nothing, she thinks, and steps inside.


	3. aimless

**the exiles**

**chapter three: aimless**

_What the hell is this place._

Is the first thing he thinks as he steps out of the wreckage of the laboratory. He does not remember quite how he got here, and he sure does not like how sunny and sandy it is here. He takes out some caution tape from his inventory. His regulator clothes were never made for spending time in the desert, and so he changes accordingly, now being draped in yellow caution tape.

The recent past is recalled. He had been fooling around on a hoverboard he found in the Derse streets. Now that he thought about it, it served him right for trying to muck around on the job. You don't pay attention, and look where that got you. In the middle of freakin' nowhere. He thinks he deserved it.

While he was zooming around the planet on the red stylish hoverboard, he decided to investigate a highly illegal frog temple that was nearby the Derse moon. He would walk around and investigate a strange lotus time capsule, and then leave, as he was notified of a strange rumbling. All around him, meteors from the Veil were zooming towards Skaia without warning.

He piloted the board over to a strange-looking meteor with some sort of building on it. It looked illegal, so he decided to venture inside. As he walked through halls and through doors, he did not take notice the ectobabies being transported to their selected meteors and a boy falling asleep. It was the Reckoning. That's what it was.

He found a slumbering boy in the middle of a laboratory, sirens wailing and red lights flashing. The exits are inoperative, and he would sacrifice his life to save the boy. Strapping the boy to the hoverboard using some caution tape, he throws the whole thing out the window, in hopes of saving another citizen.

Then the heat became almost too much to bear and the vibrating became almost too loud to manage and the lights became almost too bright to look at and then

It was all over.

The regulator-turned-renegade now stands in front of the endless miles of the desert he is about to walk, sprawling before him. He has nothing better to do, so he walks. He is rather irritated that he has to walk all this sand, and contemplates whether he should have saved the boy at all. He then shakes the thought out of his head, because the boy may have been part of some grand scheme that he had not even started to comprehend. Heck, it may have been BECAUSE of that guy he was alive. Well, you're even now.

He stumbles through sandstorms and unusually cold night and blazing sands and thirst pains and hunger cramps. And while he is doing this, he does not notice the other two pairs of footsteps in the sand, following the same path as him. Eventually, he will meet up with the other two pairs to footsteps and they will face the end together.

His inventory is still chock-full of multiple guns and gun ammo. This will later be joined by an oven, some dolls, and multiple cans of canned food. He still has a thirst for justice which will probably not stop anytime soon, and still he trudges onward.

Soon he finds a temple, beheaded, with a strange base on the top of the topless temple looking peculiarly like a devilbeast head. He has been here before. He remembers that he has been here before, with the illicit hieroglyphics and the lotus time capsule. He stares up at the tall structure, and shrugs. It's better than nothing. He beings to ascend.


	4. windswept

**the exiles**

**chapter four: windswept**

She does not think anything when taking her first steps away from her previous life. She chose this. As she steps away from the Prospitian battleship and her subjects, the recent past is recalled.

It all started with that parcel mistress. The mistress came up to her while she was sitting on her throne. The mistress explained the entire deal to her, talking about the situation with the green package and Jack wanting the White Queen and the White King to be killed. Slowly, the cogs in the queen's head turned. She knew how important this quest may be.

She would give her ring to the mistress, as if she was really dead. She took off the ring and reverted back to her normal self and gave it to the mistress. She also gave her crown to the parcel mistress. As she bid farewell, she told her to find the White King on the battlefield. And with this, it was all over. She stepped down from her throne, both literally and metaphorically. She knew what was going to happen as the mistress left the throne room.

She quickly gathered some of her subjects and fled to a Prospitian battleship. She could already see it now: the Sovereign Slayer would come. The red miles. The entire planet. The moon would come crashing down. She had to leave before things became even more drastic. She boarded the ship, and it took off into space. She entered some sort of portal near Skaia, and here she was.

She said goodbye once more to her subjects, as she knew she had to partake in this part of the journey alone. She walks for years unknown, holding on to her key, and holding onto hope.

She finds a piece of a soon-to-be egg base. She has waited possible eons for this. She inserts the key into a slot provided on the base piece. Far away, pieces reform in front of her to make the base. Without a thought, she steps inside.

* * *

><p>Four exiles. In separate corners of the empty shell of the Earth after the Reckoning.<p>

Four exiles. They would come together, sooner or later. Oh yes.

Four exiles.

Waiting.

**Author's Note: sorry this chapter is a little late and really short. But don't worry, the next chapter will be much longer, and that's why the next chapter will be released next week. Okay see you then**


	5. rendezvous

**the exiles**

**chapter five: rendezvous**

_wayward_

He reaches the bottom of the ladder and looks around cautiously. He withdraws his spear that he had relied so heavily upon. He has used this spear for killing small lizards he found scuttling in the desert, and he still feels guilty about it. The tip of the spear is still coated with the blood of his prey. Gripping the spear tightly in one hand, he enters the dark room. Slowly, the lights and machines of the base whir to life.

_peregrine_

She steps through the door of the helipod base, also gripping her weapon of choice. She never liked wielding a sword. As her time as a mail woman, she thought that wielding of a sword was unnecessary. The things that had changed. Inside the dark room, she feels around the wall for a switch. Eventually she finds one, and flicks it on. She then shields her eyes from the bright light that is produced.

_wayward_

The walls of the room that he is in are mostly empty, and on the wall to the right of the entrance are some containers. Try as he might, he is simply too weak from hunger and dehydration to open them, and even if he WAS healthy he would be too feeble. On the wall opposite those containers, there is a monitor with a keyboard, but he does not want to consider that just yet.

He walks over to the wall opposite the entrance, and finds a bottle of oil and a lump of uranium. He smells the bottle first. It smells rather toxic and generally unpleasant, so he goes for the uranium instead. He gulps it down with ease, as if he had been eating green things all his life. Which is true.

He then turns ninety degrees and faces the tangled mess of the computer wires behind the monitor and keyboard. He THEN wonders what this even is anyway. Slowly, he walks up to it. There is a young boy on the monitor and he appears to be standing on his balcony. He wonders if he can converse with him. He begins to type.

"YOU THERE. BOY."

_peregrine_

As her eyes adjust to the fluorescent lighting of the helipod, she examines her surroundings. He base is as bare as the vagabond's, only she doesn't know it yet. There are tons of mailboxes near a monitor and keyboard. She frowns at them. Is this some sort of sick joke? Were these supposed to remind her of her previous life? She doesn't know.

A sudden rumble shakes the entire base. Alarmed, she quickly whips out her sword. A metallic snake-like creature pokes its head through the door. She puts her sword down , and goes to pet the thing. It seems to be friendly. Without a warning, the metallic snake creature begins to eat one of the mailboxes! She does not know what to do about this, but she feels she had to protect those mailboxes.

Later, a decapitated metallic snake is found lying in the sand near the base. Fortunately, no blood.

_aimless_

As if expecting visitors, he hops down from the temple, holding a roll of caution tape in his hand. He begins the string up the entire perimeter with the caution tape. The area is secured. He can now rest. He starts the long and slow journey back up the temple. Plus, he has other things to do than spend the entire day in the cold night. He needs to review how his guns are doing, and explore a little bit more of the temple. He also has found some interesting stuff, such as a bass guitar and some dolls. He wonders who left those things here in the temple, anyway.

_wayward_

After typing a whole bunch of messages to the boy on the monitor, an agitated finger slips mid-sentence. His finger accidentally hits the caps lock key, a key that has not been touched in a long long time. Behind him, a container swings open. Multiple cans fall out of the now open container and roll across the floor. He turns around. FOOD!

He rushes over and picks up as many cans as he could in his arms and flails excitedly about. He couldn't believe it! How long had it been since he had found a source of food?! Decades?! Eons?! The questions whirled through his mind. He tried to pry one open and-

He realized he couldn't. Although his thick carapace was suitable and his digits were suitable to penetrate metal, he didn't have enough energy. He threw the can at the nearest wall in frustration! He then sighed and sat down. Well, at least cans were good building blocks to build something. At least maybe he could occupy himself for however long he would be in here for.

_peregrine_

_Why were these metallic snake things or whatever they are attacking me? _thought the mendicant to herself as she sat atop the pile of mailboxes. She slowly slid down the pile, a soft _thump _being produced as she hit the floor. She was real bored. Sure, finding this helipod was pretty exciting and fighting those giant metallic snakes was pretty exhilarating and fun, but what did that amount to? Nothing.

She turned her head towards the wall next to her. A monitor and keyboard. That's funny. She had never seen a computer shaped like a house before. She briefly considered the possibilities if she turned it on. What if something bad happened? What if it blew up in her face? There was only one way to find out, wasn't there. Plus, it wasn't like she had much to lose anyway. She reached over and flicked the 'on' switch.

_windswept_

She was already travelling through the air.

She didn't know what had happened, but it must have had something to do with the monitor that she had turned on earlier. When she had first stepped into the base, she had found a monitor. She quickly turned this monitor on, and observed a young lady standing on a dock near a multicolored sea. She typed some advice to this girl, talking about her guide, who is apparently a cat with tentacles.

After doing this, she pressed an arrow button on the keyboard, which then triggered some sort of time mechanism. A large clock appeared on the monitor and she was not able to do anything that registered on the keyboard.

And so she waited.

And when the timer wound down and hit zero seconds, she could feel the entire base rumbling. And it almost felt as if she was rising into the air.

_peregrine_

Elsewhere, another countdown winds down, sideways.

She didn't know what she did, but after typing several messages to some kids through the monitor, she had accidentally pressed some buttons and a timer was triggered. Panicked by this, she tried to stop the countdown in any way possible, involving throwing mailboxes at the screen and untangling wires. Alas, this was to no avail.

_wayward_

Meanwhile, another countdown comes to an end.

It had been almost four hours since the vagabond had pressed the set of buttons that had triggered the countdown, and he was now messing around with the cans of TaB that he had recently found in the container. Heck, he had made a giant town out of the numerous cans he had found. He had just finished a game of chess when the countdown had finished. He looked up and decided it was time to get out of here. He quickly packed some food and his belongings, as well as a new friend, a firefly, that he had freed from amber. Slowly, he began his ascent above the Can Base.

_null_

Two bases rose into the sky simultaneously, each carrying their respective passengers. The vagabond stood on top of the base which was now in the sky, and the mendicant was thrown against the wall as the helipod righted itself in midair. The two bases lingered in the air for a moment, and then began their journey to their rendezvous. The vagabond is confused and scared. Where will this funny-looking contraption take him? Why? And who will he meet? These are the questions he asks himself as the wind whips in his face. The mendicant is also paralleling to the vagabond's emotions and thoughts.

These questions will be answered soon enough.

_aimless_

He sits against a wall in the temple, eagerly looking at the sky. When would they be here, and who would they be? These questions will be answered soon enough.

Two white dots gleam in the sky. They slowly approach the area. The renegade stands up and he loads his gun. He is ready.

He was expecting visitors.


	6. contact part one

**the exiles**

**chapter six: contact part one**

The two ships slowly descend from the sky. Their jet flames nearly touch the sand, and the propulsion of the wind creates a crater for the bases to land in. Slowly, the bases touch down with a soft thud, jolting the passengers to a stop.

And then everything was silent.

The vagabond was the first one to react, as he began contemplating how to get down from this large cylinder. He thought about sacrificing his mayoral sash he had made hours ago when he had been building his city of cans to get down. But he knew better. A mayor never relinquishes his sash. He went back into the base to appearify some rope instead.

Meanwhile, the mendicant was recovering from the impact of the rough landing and was currently lying facedown in the pile of mailboxes. Earlier while the helipod was in the air, she had tried turning on the monitor and communicating with the first person she had seen on the screen: a young girl holding some sort of rifle. The image of the girl was heavily corrupted and there seemed to be green static everywhere, and before she knew what was going on the monitor exploded in her face. What a day.

The renegade was watching the entire scene unfold from the temple. He had loaded up on several guns, and squinted at the two trespassers. How dare they just plop down onto his property, even though he had CLEARLY marked out the area painstakingly with caution tape?! How dare they. The renegade squinted at the bases and began working out a plan of attack.

The vagabond was halfway done with climbing down the side of the base, his new firefly friend blinking at him furiously. He didn't understand what she was saying to him, and he thought he probably would never know. The vagabond had reached the end of the rope, and since he wasn't very far from the ground, he let go of the rope and fell onto the silky warm sands below.

The mendicant got up, and picked up her sword from the ground. She dusted herself off, and walked towards the door and to the harsh light of the sun. She momentarily shielded her eyes, and then stepped outside.

The questant was traveling through the air at rather alarming speeds towards a place on the other side of the globe. She does not open her eyes. She does not speak. She does not sense.

She waits.

The renegade thinks he has some time before the situation becomes rather drastic, and so he delves further into the temple. All he sees are more illicit pictography, some random equipment that was scattered around some moving platform, and the guns that he retrieved from his inventory. He decided that since he still had a little bit of time before the other carapacians could do any dangerous actions, he would have a bit of fun. He began setting up bullets upright and writing the word 'jury' on a crate nearby.

The vagabond looked around, and his eye fell on a shining white carapace. It was another being. It had been so long since he had seen another face, and he didn't care that her face was shrouded in rags. He wanted to run up to this complete stranger and hug her for five minutes, maybe longer.

The mendicant's gaze fell upon a fellow carapacian, and she would have ran up to him and hugged him, if it wasn't for this one primal instinct embedded in her cranium. He was a dersite. His kind was the ones that got her into this mess in the first place. They were the ones that sent her on this wild goose chase that ultimately led to the dooming of the universe. They were the same kind as… HIM. They had made her cold with war.

She really wanted to go over where he was and socialize, but she couldn't.

The renegade, after messing about with bullets and crates and playing in a scenario involving a courthouse, suddenly perked up. He peered over the edge of the temple and saw two other carapacians just standing in the desert. Unbelievable. Two trespassing people in his territory. He'd had to get rid of them. He chose his weapon of choice – a rocket launcher, and aimed.

The questant slept. She was approaching. The sun was falling. It was almost time.

The vagabond noticed the hat on the mendicant's head. It was a mail hat, and suddenly he was remembered of something in his inventory. He quickly rummaged through it and found it. He had gotten it when he was fiddling around with the appearifier, and he had managed to transportalize a blue package that was somehow addressed to them.

He then began to wonder what kind of practical joke this was. How had he, with no idea what this thing was, manage to pick it up and it was addressed to him? He wondered if everything was planned out in advance, and he was some sort of pawn in this giant game of the universe, the universe's dance of chaos. But he quickly shrugged the feeling off.

The mendicant noticed the vagabond take out the blue package. She rolled her eyes. No, she was not doing this again. The last time she delivered a green package it was out of duty obligation, but now this was different. She had no duty. She was an exile. The mendicant pretended not to take notice of the vagabond and his stupid package.

Suddenly there was a loud hissing noise, and something whirled through the air. The vagabond looked sharply up and dived out of the way. The sky was lit ablaze and sand flew into the air as a loud BOOM rang out through the area. The vagabond, distressed, looked around frantically for a place to hide. Ah, there! It was a rock. He dived again towards the rock to take cover from their mysterious assailant.

The mendicant didn't know how to react. She was shocked, and knocked over from the impact of the rocket. She quickly got up, unsheathing her sword, looking around for the source of the rocket. Something caught her eye. It was a dark figure, waving. The mendicant threw her sword as fast as she could towards the figure.

The sword sailed through the air, and the vagabond realized that it was meant for him. He quickly ducked down behind the rock and the sword flew just inches above his skull. The sword continued flying through the air until it embedded itself in the sand a few centimeters away from him. The vagabond recoiled in shock and looked back at the mendicant.

The mendicant realized that she had just attempted murder, and she tried not to think back to the first time she killed someone. She had made a mistake. The vagabond had only tried to help her, as he had waved towards the rock, saying that 'this was shelter. This is safety. Come over here'. The mendicant sprinted towards the rock and once she was settled next to the vagabond, she profusely apologized for the misunderstanding. The vagabond said that it was okay and there was no harm done. While he was saying this, the mendicant picked up her sword and sheathed it again.

The renegade wanted to kick himself in the posterior for missing like that. How had he missed those two criminals?! Had he grown soft or did his marksmanship skills deteriorate all of a sudden? Stupid stupid stupid. The renegade berated himself for missing such an easy shot like that.

Or maybe, just maybe he missed on purpose because he wanted company. It had been such a long time since he had seen another being. And that mail lady… the way that her fair carapace shines in the sunlight. You could not shoot her.

No! Nothing distracts the law. Not even a relationship. At times, yes, maybe it would in certain circumstances but these are not those circumstances! The renegade reloaded and took aim once more.

The vagabond thought about the package in his hands, and then back up to the carapacian next to him. He noticed the mailwoman's hat on her head, and he thought that maybe she could help deliver this mysterious package. He tapped the mendicant on the shoulder, and when she turned around the vagabond offered the package to her.

The mendicant wanted to roll her eyes and kick the blue package out of the vagabond's hands. She had had enough of delivering packages. And an offer from a dersite? Sounded like the previous time this happened. But she looked down at the small dersite and then at the package. He didn't seem so dangerous except for the spear in his inventory, and he didn't want to strike up any deal. She mulled over the decision for a long while and came upon a choice.

Okay.

One last job.


End file.
